Wednesday, 20 November 2019

Grooming vulnerable young women in the TV and movie industries

What is it called when vulnerable young women are taken through a process of gradual persuasion that they should take their clothes off for the twisted pleasure of strangers? When they are led through a gradual process that prepares them for the idea that doing such things is either normal or good? That's called "grooming". Thankfully, it's increasingly recognised as something that should be treated as a serious crime.

Generally the word "grooming" conjures up the idea of seedy middle-aged blokes on the Internet trying to persuade young teenagers. Or alternatively, pimps in seedy back-allies or theatres hawking those whom they have a hold over to all-comers. But if you apply a little thought, you'll realise that the problem is vastly more widespread than that. It's everywhere. Sexualisation of young people is a common-place in our society. One place where it is rampant is in Hollywood and television and other visual media. In particular, young actresses are persuaded by middle-aged seedy males ("producers", "directors" or "agents") that it's in their own interests to show their young flesh for the viewing pleasure of the afore-mentioned males, and to all the people they can hawk that flesh to for profit.

On which note, here's a report of an interview with an actress from "Game of Thrones" speaking about how she was led through a grooming process to show her naked flesh (under the pretence that it was the naked flesh of her "character"), in various sexual acts, for the pleasure of the viewers of that show, and the profit of its producers (and her own career): https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-50485264

You'll note that she doesn't use the word "grooming", or describe those who groomed her as perverts or criminals. But does she describe anything else? What is the real difference in what's happened if those who groomed you wore suits and aftershave instead of smelly tracksuits? The most effective groomers are those whose victims don't realise what's going on, even afterwards. Those who are exploited end up confused about the process. Even when the evidence is crystal clear to world plus dog, they still wonder if they were truly loved, appreciated, etcetera, and only see the abuse as something that was a part of a larger, more important whole - rather than as at the heart of everything that happened to them. So, she describes her innocence as a new actress of the depravity she was being asked to enact; describes her shock at seeing the scripts; talks about the crying and trauma before the scenes; the pressure to go through with it to not harm her career; and speaks of it at a distance under a fictional abstraction of "Khaleesi's nudity", rather than it being her own exploitation.

Someone will tell me that she was not groomed or exploited - that it was "empowering", a powerful statement of her femininity. Well, read the article - she disagrees, even if she's not yet at the point of identifying it for exactly what it was. Things that are empowering and honour the glory of the feminine don't leave the females involve scared, traumatised or trying not to vomit. The parading in public to everybody willing to pay a few pennies of what all young women instinctively feel is precious and to be protected - i.e. their nudity - is not empowering, but degrading. Exploiting young actresses for pornographic purposes is grooming, and is depraved, whether it's performed by smelly men in tracksuits in back allies, or men with sophisticated grooming in suits in television studios. It's exploitation, whether it's for the twisted pleasure of the unsophisticated at a low-grade porn club, or the supposedly sophisticated watching it in their nicely decorated lounges in suburbia. What it is is what it is, regardless of the labels that are stuck upon it. I hope that, if you love God and love the Lord Jesus, you refuse to take part, at any level, in supporting such things. Turn it off and throw it out.